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Friday, June 10, 2016

Ok, so it's no longer May... but I'd been hoping I'd take more photos of the plot, so here it is, a long rambling, poorly photographed update:

Our days have been getting more of a rhythm (I say rhythm to sound less uptight. Actually it's a schedule). It's only getting light around here at 7:30am... winter is here. Our days are not spectacularly interesting, but I write about it here both to remember this time of our lives, and to share with others of you who are homeschooling multiple kids and both trying to work. Eug works first, from 7:30-9:30, and we basically go in 2 hour shifts until 4 or 4:30, when we eat and start farm chores and house cleaning (also known as hard labour) for two or three hours before the kids start to get ready for bed. Eug and I sometimes work in the evening, depending on whether we did the work we wanted to during the day. We are boring, but with 3 kids at home, boring gives us just enough automation to think more creatively and make progress. There's some variation because sometimes friends visit, or the kids do have swimming or drama or homeschool picnic or time with my mom and dad, but this is more or less the pattern of our days.

During my morning work slot, I visit Masiphumelele and interview people in the township. I don't think any university would want me as a tenured staff member (and I clearly am not super invested in that outcome, given that I'm writing here without a pseudonym), and yet the idea that I can support my family (even in the short term) by talking with people and listening to their stories is nothing short of remarkable. In my experience of research, there's often this gap between what one would like to know about and what you have resources to research. For my PhD, I was in a rush because I only got funding for three years. So three years it was. It felt like a race to convince others (and myself) that I'd done something worthwhile. This time around, I am basically being given permission to do the best I can. I'm not sure what will come after the post-doc, so I feel almost no pressure to rush into an analysis for the sake of it. It feels like a gift. I'll leave it at that for now, though I know there's a lot more to say about this stuff.

I guess not knowing what will come after the post-doc could feel like pressure, but I'm putting all my hopes on the farm to feed us. Haha. Kidding, kidding. I'm putting all my hopes on the outrageous geniosity of Eug. Ok, also kidding, not because he's not a genius. He is. Please buy his books and write raving reviews. Please. No I'm not begging. (please).

Ok, so exactly how practical is paid-off farm as a source of our food and a small income? As far as I can tell, not very. For the farm to pay our bills, at least in the next five years or so, we would need intense effort that is physically impossible for us right now (or we'd have to pay people rubbish wages to do our farm work for us). In three years or so, given a lot of hard labour on our part, I think we may just be able to balance the food we produce and eat, and the food we sell to earn enough to buy the bits we won't produce (flour, oil, rice). But even that's ambitious. We still do have other bills that I don't think selling food could cover: internet, car expenses, farm maintenance, lessons for the kids, property taxes/trash pickup. Which is to say, on an acre with a family of five, our living costs can be significantly decreased, but we still need some money from working or something. We could obviously cut back if we needed to, but our standard of living would decline. I'm not sure what my point here is: I guess it's me giving a nod to the fact that we can't save the world one personal homestead at a time. Our efforts are likely an example of privilege compounded: we can work hard with the prospect of something slow, relatively unprofitable and beautiful because we have few external stressors and no struggling family members. Which is not to say homesteading is a bad idea. I'm about a big a fan as Wendell Berry as you get, but we cannot cut off our connections to political and social systems and processes, despite adapting and adopting simple lives.

This month. we've continued our work on two patches of the food forest. My evolving vision is for the food forest to be a continuous strip around the entire plot-- thin in places, quite substantial in others. I have some vague unsubstantiated theory that continuity will allow more safe passage for more kinds of life, or something. We've put some thought into fencing, which I'd wanted to avoid but now wholeheartedly embrace as a means to make better use of our property by rotating animals carefully. We also are considering the possibility of a couple of pigs in the near future. Baddie Chicken (kept visiting the rooster next door, who can blame her) got swapped for Feather. Our reservoir is pink from an algae bloom. Operation Reservoir unsuccessful-- hopefully better news in June. I waded in some terrifyingly sewagey water near the Liesbeek to get some water hyacinth to help with the algae bloom. And finally, we're trying to help Hana sleep better... by banishing me to her rollout bed in the kids' room. Hoping that her not smelling me will mean that she doesn't wake every 30 minutes like our boys' did. So far it's working, except for the part where I'm not in my bed...the downsides of co-sleeping. We'll try a couple more weeks of it, then see if I can be introduced safely.

One beehive is doing really well, the other died.

Our sunroom is amazing for quick growth. The bananas outside were destroyed by ducks, so I'm keeping these ones indoors while we figure out where to put them on the property. They need more warmth than Cape Town typically offers, so they were thriving next to our hot compost piles, until the ducks developed a taste for them.

Eli is obsessed with the guinea pigs.

aah, the terrifying creatures of the farm. Cape Dune Mole Rat, caught wandering while my dad and I were walking around the farm.

we renewed our aquarium membership, even though we're far away. Just feels like an aquarium year...